Pregnancy for all
I was talking to a friend of mine recently who is planning to start a family soon. During the conversation, she said, "We're planning on getting pregnant soon, we may already be pregnant". First, I'm very happy for my friend and her husband and wish them all the best, but when did being pregnant become a tagteam event? I had no idea that a woman could hand off the little fetus so she could have a night out now and then. Seriously, I hear this turn of phrase a lot and it sounds wrong every time. Definition-wise, pregnant is defined as "containing unborn young within the body" (Merriam-Webster online). We don't point at a male and female animal and say "they are pregnant", why should we confuse the term with people? You can say "Sam and Betty are having a baby", in the sense that they will have a child at the end of the process, that seems correct. What's the deal? Do men have to be included in everything? Should I start saying things like, "Sorry Maggie, I can't come over and visit, we just got our period and we feel horrible" or "We just went in for a PAP test and a breast exam, everything checked out ok". On the same note, I don't think I ever want to say, "Wow, good thing we only have a prostate exam once a year".
We could always invent a new word that means "Sam and Betty are currently in the process of becoming parents, Betty is doing most of the actual assembly, while Sam is holding up his end by taking all the bitching and requests for strange foods in the middle of the night". Get to work!